Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Of course it is an agreement; it's a contract. You can use whatever semantics you like; the bottom line is this: we had the character and commitment to bring those gas companies to Canberra and get them to do the right thing by the Australian people, and the Labor Party did nothing. The Labor Party allowed gas to be exported from eastern Australia without doing anything to protect Australian consumers. Then the member for Port Adelaide told Barry Cassidy that they had no warning. 'Nobody told us; it all came as a bolt from the blue,' he said, 'How could it possibly happen that allowing all of this gas to be exported would affect the domestic market?' That's what he said on Insiders back in April, and then finally he had to fess up and tell the truth. The truth, very bluntly, is this: they were warned. They were told that allowing gas exports from the east coast without any protection for the domestic market would put upward pressure on prices and tighten supply, and that's exactly what happened. We, about to become the world's largest exporter of LNG, got to a point where businesses were looking at shutting down on the east coast because they couldn't get the gas they needed, and so we had the commitment to threaten to impose export bans on gas and negotiated with the companies and secured their commitment.

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